Security Studies Events Page

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Upcoming Events:

Aaron Abrams: “OSINT In National Security: Leveraging Commercially and Publicly Available Data for Enhanced Security”

Aaron Abrams is an ECU alum, who currently works in the Intelligence Community producing Open Source Intelligence.

When: Tuesday, September 17, 2024, from 5pm to 6:15pm
Where: Joyner Library, Faulkner Gallery

The event is organized by the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies program and has been funded by a donation from the Oak Foundation.

 

Past Events:

Public Lecture in Brewster C103 on March 21, 2024, at 5:00pm to 6:15pm

Dr. Robert McCreight: “The Era of Cognitive Warfare – What Next?”

After serving the United States government at the State Department and other federal agencies over a 35-year career, Dr. McCreight retired in 2004 and served as a consultant for major homeland security and national defense contractors.  His professional career includes work as an intelligence analyst. treaty negotiator, arms control delegate to the UN, counter-terrorism advisor, political-military affairs analyst and Deputy Director of Global Scientific Exchanges at State Department. During his service at the U.S. Department of State he was a senior Soviet military analyst with INR and specialized in the assessment of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.  Later in his professional career he performed assignments where he either managed or coordinated international post-disaster relief and humanitarian operations, developed peacekeeping policy, promoted global science and technology cooperation projects and helped design treaty verification systems.  He also participated in the design and coordination of White House nuclear readiness command crisis exercises during the Reagan administration.  During his federal career he designed, developed and coordinated well over 26 cabinet level strategic nuclear preparedness exercises, worked on Presidential Protection and Survivability Programs and directed the operation of several dozen senior-level military exercises involving theoretical force-on-force scenarios between the United States and the Soviet Union.

McCreight spent 27 years of combined active and reserve military service concurrently with his civilian work in U.S. Army Special Operations and has devoted 12 years to teaching graduate school as an adjunct at Georgetown, George Mason and George Washington Universities in subjects as diverse as disaster and emergency management, strategic intelligence, nonproliferation policy, homeland security policies, terrorism analysis, intelligence analysis and assessing WMD threats.  He completed his doctoral degree in Public Administration in 1989 and remains active in graduate education programs in emergency and crisis management as well as security studies and terrorism analysis. He has also written and published over 27 articles on chemical weapons use, disaster management, disaster recovery, post-strike attribution, biological weapons threats to homeland security, crisis management, WMD scenario development and collegiate educational strategies for developing future crisis managers for government service.  His textbook-Emergency Exercise Design and Evaluation, 4th edition was published in 2022 and continues to be a popular resource in graduate schools. He has also co-edited a textbook on Homeland Defense published by CRC Press in October 2014 and written chapters in the CRC Series on Crisis Management and a chapter on NeuroWeapons in the James Giordano book NeuroScience and National Security. His recent publications for Small Wars Journal, US Army Mad Scientist, and Academia Biology focus on the risks and issues embedded in cognitive warfare and what McCreight calls  NeuroStrike in his research.

Dr McCreight has taught graduate courses in national security, homeland security, emergency management, intelligence operations and foreign policy at several universities such as Georgetown, George Washington University, George Mason University, Virginia Tech University, the University of Nevada-LasVegas and National Defense University. He maintains an interest in emerging technologies posing a global threat.

Robert McCreight: “The War Inside Your Mind: Unprotected Brain Battlefields and Neuro-Vulnerability,” Academia Biology 2024.

Mona Russel and Armin Krishnan: “The Origins of Terror: From January 1979 to September 10, 2021  

  1. Salafism and the Growth of Islamic Fundamentalism in the 1950s
  2. The Iranian Revolution of January 1979 – Creating the Islamic Republic
  3. The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the Carter Doctrine (1979)
  4. The Growth of Islamic Terrorism in the 1980s (Iranian hostage crisis, Hezbollah) (1979-1983)
  5. The Jihad in Afghanistan and Increasing US Support to the Mujahedeen via Pakistan (1981-1984)
  6. The Afghan Arabs and the Afghan Services Bureau (1984)
  7. The Decision to Win and the Escalation of US and Saudi Covert Action (1985)
  8. Soviet Defeat and the International Network of Afghan War Veterans (1989)
  9. The Gulf War and Osama bin Laden’s Offer to Defend Saudi Arabia (1990-91)
  10. The Dispersal of International Jihadists Around the World (1991-95)
  11. The First World Trade Center Bombing (1993)
  12. The Bojinka Plot and the Khobar Towers Bombing (1995)
  13. Bin Laden Moves to Afghanistan and Issues the First Fatwa (1996)
  14. The East African Embassy Bombings and the Second Fatwa (1998)
  15. The Formation of a Global Jihadist Network (1996-2001)
  16. The Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda Summit (2000)
  17. The USS Cole Bombing (2000)
  18. Arrival of the Hijackers in the US and Flight Training (2000-2001)
  19. The Attack Warnings That Were Ignored by the Bush Administration (2001)
  20. The Assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud (September 2001)

 

Virtual Public Lecture on February 23, 2021 at 4:30pm to 5:45pm

Melissa Graves: “Nixon’s FBI: Hoover, Watergate, and a Bureau in Crisis”

https://ecu.webex.com/ecu/j.php?MTID=mc8aa07acce181adbaf9f4f2d5f732a5d

+1-415-655-0003 US Toll

Melissa Graves is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at The Citadel. Her research areas include national security legal issues, the US presidency’s relationship to the intelligence community, and intelligence analysis. She teaches a variety of courses on intelligence and legal issues. Her book, Nixon’s FBI: Hoover, Watergate, and a Bureau in Crisis, evaluates the historically complex and oftentimes fraught relationships between the President, Attorney General, and FBI Director.

Dr. Graves has published articles in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, IALEIA Journal of Intelligence Analysis, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, and Security Journal. She authored a chapter on FBI historiography in Intelligence Studies in Britain and the US: Historiography Since 1945 (Edinburgh University Press, eds. Christopher R. Moran and Christopher J. Murphy, 2012). She is a coauthor of Introduction to Intelligence Studies, 2nd Edition (Taylor and Francis, Carl Jensen, David McElreath, and Melissa Graves, 2017).

Prior to her position at The Citadel, Dr. Graves served in a variety of functions at The University of Mississippi’s Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, including most recently as Interim Director. She has presented at conferences held by the International Studies Association, the Five Eyes Analytic Workshop, and the International Association for Intelligence Education. Dr. Graves also serves as an American Council on Education faculty evaluator for military programs.

Prior to beginning work at CISS in 2008, Dr. Graves held internships at the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office and King’s College London’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research. She retains inactive bar status in Texas.

To watch this lecture click on the link below:
https://youtu.be/6VQqWtiXW9M